THE Sun newspaper was forced to pay substantial damages to a Liverpool man after wrongly branding him a paedophile.

Retired musician George Gibbs felt his life had been put in danger after the allegations, the High Court heard.

Mr Gibbs suffered “very significant distress, humiliation and anxiety” after a photograph of him, captioned with his surname, was featured in an article in The Sun in March this year, said counsel Godwin Busuttil.

Both versions alleged Mr Gibbs had been deported from Thailand because of his involvement in child sex offences.

Mr Busuttil said that News Group Newspapers, which now accepted that the allegation was untrue and that it was wrong to publish it, had agreed to publish a correction and pay Mr Gibbs “substantial” damages over the libel.

The newspaper’s solicitor, Harriet Brown, offered its apologies for the distress and anxiety caused but The Sun refused to elaborate how the error occurred.